‘Point Break’ is Being Remade Because Why Not?

1991's 'Point Break' is the latest film to be dusted off for remaking, as former cinematographer Ericson Core has been hired to direct it, and there's already a finished script. Which means this might actually happen. Great.

In the original FBI agent Johnny Utah (played by Keanu Reeves) was on the trail of bank robbers (headed by the late Patrick Swayze), who he found out were also surfers. In the remake, it's a gang of extreme sports stars who spend their spare time as criminals. Kurt Wimmer, who also wrote 'Salt' and 'Equilibrium,' is the credited writer.

This comes from Deadline, and what's fascinating about this is that we're now getting remakes of 90's films (which was bound to happen). Sure, 'The Amazing Spider-Man' rebooted a franchise, but that was an outlier. We're still at about a twenty year window between remakes, but with so many sequels, franchises and remakes, eventually it feels like the studios will eat their own tail.

The original worked in part because it was absurd, in part because of the casting -- with Swayze perfect as a zen bank robber -- but mostly because of director Kathryn Bigelow, who treated the material with so much seriousness you might miss that she saw how silly and heightened the whole thing was. As with most films that work on tone, it makes us very pessimistic about the remake, mostly because of films like 'Red Dawn' that seemed to miss completely while the original was so celebrated. But you never know.